Asia Trip 1/4 - Canton, China (mostly just pictures)

Mr. Lilasaur and I got married, so we were due to go to Asia and do the "show-and-tell" to all our non-immediate relatives and do wedding photography. I am originally from the Canton part of China, while Mr. Lilasaur is from Taiwan. Since I rarely go back to China and Mr. Lilasaur goes back to Taiwan quite often, we decided the best place to do wedding photography would be in Taiwan. Besides, Taiwan seems to offer very good photography at competitive prices. We have determined that this was the most economical route: Vancouver --> Hong Kong (layover) --> China (1 week) --> Hong Kong (2 days) -->  Taiwan (3 weeks)--> Vancouver. The whole trip was one month long, and costed $1300 (tax included) per person from Eva Airlines. October/November were chosen because they are off-season months and Asian temperatures would be more tolerable to those that are used to living in North America. Anyways, so here is the first part, Canton, China.

One of the options to get from Hong Kong to Canton is via a boat. Since Mr. Lilasaur and I was supposed to arrive in HK at around 8:40, we thought the best option was to take the one at 9:35 leaving from the airport. We have inquired beforehand that we can buy our tickets at the E3 section of the airport and the staff would help us get our luggage. WRONG!
When we went to buy the tickets the staff told us that we wouldn't be able to make it to the 9:35 because they need at least one hour prior to departure to get our luggage. The next one that leaves the airport would be at 15:40 so we decided to exit the checked-in area and got our luggage. Since we have already exited the checked-in area, we had to go to Tsim Sha Tsui to take the boat from the China Ferry Terminal instead, and the next one was at 13:00. Since it seemed like we had a lot of time at the moment, I made the wrong suggestion to have lunch at the airport before taking the bus. The bus took like an hour to get to where the airport staff told us to get off and it was actually very far from the terminal, so we had to walk. Maybe people were getting off for lunch early or something that day, but the whole freaken street was full of people and dragging luggage through the crowd was very very hard. We finally arrived at the terminal at 12:55 and the lady refused to sell us tickets because it was only 5 minutes to boarding! #%#%@#$%@ So this is how we missed the 2nd boat. By this point, we have been on/off the plane for about 15 hours already so we were so exhausted and decided to just wait at that spot for the one that leaves at 15:00... which is the same one that would arrive at the airport at 15:40... the one that, if we stayed put, would've been on. After all this trouble, we eventually arrived in Canton.

Canton is notorious for all the weird food that we eat - basically all the horror stories that you hear on the Internet about eating dogs, cats, fetus, placenta, etc... probably all originate from Canton. So here are the some of the food that we've eaten:

Left to right: snow peas with octopus, chicken, snails

Only bought a small version of this, but this is duck neck.

KFC's Kid's Menu in China - fish cake starfish & taro balls

Frogs

Freshly killed Tilapia for fish congee. Must try! They basically give you boiling congee and you cook the fish in the congee as you eat it - this will prevent overcooking the fish. You can request to have the congee reheated. 

Deep-fried water beetle

Steamed sandworms with garlic

Chinese mitten-handed crabs. The goal is to eat the eggs inside, which is something that isn't allowed in Canada. 

Osmanthus jelly

Moray eel with garlic sprout

Lotus roots (it was in season)

Duck with lots of small hair on the skin. Apparently the hairiness depends on when the duck gets killed. Was surprised when I saw this because all the ducks that I've eaten in Canada have very clean skin.

Mantis Shrimps. Didn't bring a camera when they were on the table.

Was advertised as mango black cod. I don't think it was real black cod because the texture of this fish was a lot rougher.

Mr. Lilasaur found the dining experience in Canton to be very unique, so I will talk about that here. Basically there is a tiny "zoo" or "aquarium" in the back of every restaurant to ensure that the food is fresh. You can go and pick which fish to eat or doing a generic order. It is common for locals to give you either the dead or the smaller version of what you order, so a trick that my uncle claimed to use when he travelled a lot was to ask for a knife and chop a part of the head off then match with your order when it comes to your table... whether you want to use that trick is completely up to you. Here are some pictures of "zoos" and "aquariums":

A small aquarium in a small restaurant.

Snakes, no biggie

This was a big lobster... approximately 20 cm??

Frogs

Kind of hard to see, but these were rattlesnakes

The back of a bigger restaurant, with my uncle signalling me over...

... to show me these, sandworms.

Also part of the above restaurant.

The floating thing inside of fish.

Chicken testicles

... a cattle. Apparently there is a boar beside this cattle, but I didn't see it.

The zoo portion, part of the above restaurant with the big aquarium.

Don't know what these were.

And other miscellaneous things that we have seen:

Dried starfish for sale... my uncle suspects these are used for soup???

Dried sea urchin skins... again maybe for soup??

A bag full of snake skins...

"Lover crabs": see how they only have one main claw? 

Crabs being sold on the market, one is killed for display to show that the crabs have eggs (what people want). It is generally not a good idea to buy seafood from a touristy area because the prices are highly inflated and people are there to trick tourists. My uncle says that these strings used to tie the crabs weigh as much as the crabs themselves. 

Water beetles being sold on the market.

Stingrays being sold as food. My uncle said that they don't taste very good, lol.

Random flower planted by neighbours.

Random tree(?) on the street.

I was actually amazed at how fast China is developing, even in the suburbs. Apparently there are already two 5-star hotels in the town, and more are being built. There are even apartments in town now, something that I did not see the last time I went back, which was about 7 years ago. In addition, I also saw a lot of brand name cars such as Audi, Porsche, and even BMW 7 series, the series that I haven't seen in Vancouver yet. China seems to be doing quite well.